500 Px - a new wrinkle - be aware

Concerning to people who display their images on 500 px. In the last week or so I’ve been receiving notices of people
“Following” me in my email every day… I’ve gotten them sporatically in the past when someone likes a particular image or subject that has been uploaded. When one or two new ones came in every day showed up with no new uploads, it bore checking out. The first couple of them showed each person named as “following” had five or six girly pin-up images. Provocative but not out of the ordinary for some photographers. In some others, images were blocked out as “Adult Content”, I did not peek. The fact that all of them only were displaying only that type of photography sent up red flags. Looking closer, one of them had a comment that confirmed my suspicions, another had an image with a message on a hand held up, reversed in a mirror and difficult to read, but it also confirmed what I was thinking. These were all a clever new way of advertising themselves.

Other than those that gave a hint that gave themselves away, there was nothing obvious on them to violate 500 px terms of service. Checking for a way of reporting this new invasion, there was no direct way to pass on what was happening but Help did give a way to check for robots or spam by checking their activity. Each of them were “following” from 30 to 100 or more people within a day or so.

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They are on FlickR also. The names were a giveaway something wasn’t right so I checked them out and it is the same as you found. I simply blocked them from my photostream.

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I’ll have to look for that feature, I don’t recall seeing one on 500 px. Never had reason to look for it. I don’t think they ever return to whomever they target. My guess is they’re looking for someone who responds with a message or clicks on the link to a webpage they’ve left. There’s no duplication of names so there is no way, so far, to successfully block new ones. What I haven’t checked, but will, to see if the URL addresses lead to the same main location which I think may be a possibility . I have a Flickr account as well but haven’t seen anything from there.

Update: Three of the four remaining “Followers” are showing the same main URL addresses with different account names.
500 Px must have become aware of what was happening because older notifications I received now are showing “No such page”. Could have also been deleted by the user. The categories listed as reasons to report a user didn’t apply…so I just used Spam and reported them. They were removed from the list of those Following. .

Most of my photostream is marked friends and family. The few that I put in groups or in public were the ones getting a “FAV” from the mysterious few. The only way I know how to block them is to go to their profile and click on block. So in FlickR you have to go to them.

I too have seen this on Flickr and have blocked them. When checking their profiles, a number of them have a .ru (Russian) email suffix.

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Interesting … I’ve had mail from so-called followers of my images posted on Flickr and other sites wanting to add me to …
I don’t have an account showing images!!! so how does that work ---- the scam is too obvious

Yes, that is part of scam and why I blocked them. I didn’t mind the “fav”, I could use a few more for my ego, but the follower stuff seemed like stalking to me.

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I have an acct. on Flickr but got turned off by the various ways people boost their likes and favs that may or may not have anything to do with how good an image might be, such as having to “like” a certain amount of images to be in a group. I much prefer a “like” to be because an image caught someone’s eye. Some may be very popular and others not, a gauge of sorts on what direction I might take beyond the subject.itself. Cute little puppies and kittens always get a good following.:grin:

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